The assistant curator is a faculty-equivalent appointee who provides a wide range of professional services in the Fine Arts areas and Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts department, in support of its research, teaching, and public service missions. This is a part-time position that will require a minimum of twenty hours of work each week.

The VRAF Internship Award provides financial support for graduate students and recent graduates preparing for a career in visual resources and image management. The award grants $3,000 to support a period of internship in archives, libraries, museums, visual resources collections in academic institutions, or other appropriate contexts. It also provides $1,000 for professional development. A complete description of the internship and application instructions are available at: https://vrafoundation.com/internship-award/.

Brief description of internship: Paid public library internship in the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin vacationland for at least 12 weeks this summer for the right library/archives/museum student or recent graduate. Learn everything from how a public library works for real and archival arrangement of historic collections of documents, and photographs, assisting in selection for the art history and art books collection, to working as a conference and programming assistant. Creative and like people? And computers? Enjoy nature and summer reading? This is the place. You’ll get the experience you need while having a great time—and get paid for it! Would prefer a recently accepted or in a current information, library, museum, or archival program, or a recent graduate, but all related majors and specialties encouraged to apply.

This is the fifth internship offered by the VRAF and we are very grateful to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for so generously supporting this opportunity.

The award grants $3,000 to support an internship in archives, libraries, museums, visual resources collections, or other appropriate settings. It also provides a professional development account of $1,000 to be used for attending conferences, including the VRA Annual Conference and/or Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI).

The student will provide 200 hours of service over the course of their internship. In order to be eligible for the internship, the student must have completed at least ten credits of graduate coursework in Library/Information Science, Art History, Architecture or Architectural History, Visual or Studio Art, Museum Studies, or other applicable fields of study.

Although this internship is available to non-US residents, the work must take place at an institution within the USA. While Canadian institutions are not eligible to host a VRAF intern, such internships might be of interest to any number of people who are seeking VR-related internships and can be included in our list of available opportunities.

Please click here (LINK) for a list of potential host sites. Keep checking back, as the list will continue to grow!

We’re thrilled to introduce theamazing instructors for this year’s Summer Educational Institute, many of whom are joining us for the first time! We’ll be highlighting one instructor from the 2017 curriculum each week, so be sure to stay tuned.

We’re happy to introduce Justin Schell, Learning Design Specialist, University of Michigan Library. Justin will be leading the workshop, Getting a Digital Humanities Project Started, and co-leading Let’s Get Practical: How did they do that? Reverse Engineering DH Projects.

Getting a Digital Humanities Project Started will help you structure DH Projects, from the goals and outcomes, to the tools, techniques, metadata, and project management objectives. The hands-on component, Let’s Get Practical: How did they do that? Reverse Engineering DH Projects will provide time to apply skills and strategies to projects and collections. Come with questions, leave with answers!

Justin Schell

Did you know?

Justin Schell is a filmmaker, writer, and director of the Shapiro Design Lab for the University of Michigan Library. He holds a PhD in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota, where he completed an online and multimodal dissertation. In addition, he helped found the Minnesota Hip-Hop Archive as part of the University of Minnesota Libraries.

As a documentary filmmaker, he has completed a number of short and feature-length films, including We Rock Long Distance, which weaves together the sounds and stories of three Twin Cities hip-hop artists (M.anifest, Maria Isa, and Tou SaiKo Lee) as they journey home to Ghana, Puerto Rico, and Thailand to create unexpected collaborations across generation and geography. More of his video work has been shown in the Walker Art Center, Twin Cities Public Television, online at the Huffington Post and the Progressive, and screened in the Twin Cities Film Fest, Twin Cities Underground Film Festival, and the Qhia Dab Neeg Hmong Film Festival. He regularly teaches courses on documentary production, interviewing, and editing.

SEI provides both new and more experienced professionals the opportunity to stay current in the rapidly changing fields of digitization, project management, fair use and copyright, metadata, and digital asset management, as well as significant networking opportunities. As a 2015 SEI graduate noted, “The curriculum was excellent in scope, striking a balance between detailed, practical exploration of relevant skills & tools, and putting these in the context of broader issues in visual resources/arts librarianship.”

We’re thrilled to introduce theamazing instructors for this year’s Summer Educational Institute, many of whom are joining us for the first time! We’ll be highlighting one instructor from the 2017 curriculum each week, so be sure to stay tuned.

We’re happy to introduce Laura Fu, another local star from North Carolina — Project Manager at the Park Library, UNC Chapel Hill School of Media and Journalism. Laura will be leading the Introduction to Digial Asset Management, which will introduce Digital Asset Management (DAM), its concepts, and foundational elements. DAM consists of management tasks and technological functionality designed to enhance the inventory, control, and distribution of digital assets (rich media such as photographs, videos, graphics and logos). This session will provide a solid understanding of the core components of DAM success. Come with questions, leave with answers!

Laura Fu

Did you know?

Laura Fu is a librarian with a focus on digital media management, digital image management, and digital asset management. From collecting content in various digital corners of a company, to discovering and building a taxonomy, to defining metadata and controlled vocabularies, she strives to offer the best support in the design and implementation of a successful digital asset management solution.

She is the Equipment Analyst and Project Manager at the Park Library at UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Media and Journalism, where she’s heading up the selection, implementation and launch of a new online reservation system for journalism students’ equipment. An active member of the Special Libraries Association, she also consults with Allied Vaughn as their Social Media Program Manager, where she’s helping to recruit librarians for various DAM projects nationwide. She earned her BA in video production from Hofstra University and her MLS from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

There’s still time to book a room at the hotel! If you’d like to book a room at the Franklin inn, the block group rate of $165 per night can be secured until May 12th. There are a limited number of rooms at that price. An email will be sent to all registered attendees with the booking code.

SEI provides both new and more experienced professionals the opportunity to stay current in the rapidly changing fields of digitization, project management, fair use and copyright, metadata, and digital asset management, as well as significant networking opportunities. As a 2015 SEI graduate noted, “The curriculum was excellent in scope, striking a balance between detailed, practical exploration of relevant skills & tools, and putting these in the context of broader issues in visual resources/arts librarianship.”